Using the Materials Browser on a Mac

In this chapter we are going to take a look at textures and materials in Google SketchUp.Now before we get started I want to show you the differences between the Mac andthe Windows interface for the Materials window.Now we can find this window here under Window>Materials and when it comes upyou'll see it's a little bit different on the Mac than it is on the PCs, so letme just point it out some of the differences.The big difference is that we have all of these tabs along the top.Now the first four tabs are color pickers.

So the first one is a color wheel and we can just pick a color that way.If we want we can select this second one, which are sliders.Now you can have a gray scale slider, we can have RGB, HSB or CMYK slidersHowever, you want to choose your colors.We also have a Spectrum color picker.Now if you're familiar with the Mac and familiar with most of these colorpickers, and we also have crayons which are just standard stock colors.Now the tab that's most important is this last one which is Textual PalLet's.

And if I click that you'll notice that I have photographic and realistictextures that we can create from photographs and we can create ourselves.So this gives us a pulldown menu that we can use to select all sortsof different textures.Now if I scroll through here you can see that we actually do have Crayons andjust standard colors but we also have other ones which are, for example, Bricksand Cladding if you want to put brick on the outside of your building.We have things like Carpet and Textiles.We also have things like Roofing.

So all of these will give a much more realistic look to your models and we canapply textures very easily just by selecting them and clicking on them andnotice how it comes up here in this window.And once we've clicked on it notice how our cursor changes to a paint bucket.And all I have to do is position my paint bucket over the face I want to colorand just left-click and you can see that I'm actually filling this roof withthese roofing tiles.Now one more difference between the Mac and Windows versions is that, you don'thave a dedicated Eyedropper tool.

Now on the Mac if you want the eyedropper a color all you have to do is holddown the Command key.So if I position my cursor over, for example, this wall, you'll notice it's a paint bucket.As soon as I touch Command it switches to an eyedropper and all I have to do isclick on that and notice how my color changes to that white color.So if I position it over the roof, hold down my Command key, it will pick up theroofing tiles as well.So those are some of the differences.And just be aware of those as we go through our subsequent lessons on how tocreate our own materials in SketchUp.

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Released

6/28/2011

In this course, author George Maestri explains how to model and render 3D objects and scenes using SketchUp 8. The course covers the fundamentals of the application, from navigating the user interface, manipulating objects, and building basic shapes to importing objects from Google Earth, animating a scene, and modeling organic terrain using the Sandbox tools. The course also explores SketchUp Pro features, which are available as an upgrade. These include tools for creating dynamic components and adding interactivity, as well as sophisticated importing and exporting options for working with outside applications.